Synopses & Reviews

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Publisher Comments:

This reader examines the family through two lenses--the familiar private family, in which we live our personal lives, and the public family, in which we deal with broader societal issues, such as raising the next generation, and the care of the elderly. Consequently, these readings look both at intimate, personal concerns, such as whether to marry, as well as societal concerns, such as governmental policies that affect families. The reader corresponds exactly to and is published concurrent with Cherlin's textbook Public and Private Families: An Introduction; both the textbook and the reader have 14 chapters of the same names.

About the Author

Andrew J. Cherlin is Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. He received a B.S. from Yale University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1976. He is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, Public and Private Families: An Introduction. His other books include Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (revised and enlarged edition, 1992), Divided Families: What Happens to Children when Parents Part (with Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., 1991), The Changing American Family and Public Policy (1988), and The New American Grandparent: A Place in the Family, A Life Apart (with Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., 1986). In 1989-1990 he was chair of the Family Section of the American Sociological Association. In 1999 he was president of the Population Association of America, the scholarly organization for demographic research.

In 2005, Professor Cherlin was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He recived the Distinguished Career Award in 2003 from the Family Section of the American Sociological Association. In 2001, he received the Olivia S. Nordberg Award for Excellence in Writing in the Population Sciences; and in 1999, he was President of the Population Association of America. He was also received a Merit Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for his research on the effects of family structure onchildren. His recent articles include "The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage," in the Journal of Marriage and Family; "The Influence of Physical and Sexual Abuse on Marriage and Cohabitation," in the American Sociological Review; and "American Marriage in the Early Twenty-First Century," in The Future of Children.

He also has written many articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Newsweek, and other periodicals. He has been interviewed on ABC News Nightline, the Today Show, network evening news programs, National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and other news programs and documentaries.

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